


Proofing Time

by pyrchance



Series: Bake Until Golden [1]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Character Study, Domestic, Fluff, Gardening & Baking, Gen, Pre-Slash, Quarantine, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:48:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28534680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrchance/pseuds/pyrchance
Summary: Thanks to the lockdown, Pete has no choice but to stay put in his house and entertain himself.It goes, by all accounts, far better than expected.
Relationships: Patrick Stump & Pete Wentz
Series: Bake Until Golden [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2162865
Comments: 17
Kudos: 32





	Proofing Time

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Pete's gardening updates, clearly the most important posts of his life.
> 
> Also, I am just playing around the band's families at this point. Just expect vague non-canon band families.

Like most great things in his life, Pete doesn’t exactly plan for his next grand project, but he recognizes it the moment it steps through the door.

His son clutches the mason jar stuffed with damp paper towels more delicately than he often does his baby sister. The lima bean inside is small and green and utterly unremarkable. Pete only recognizes it as a lima bean from his own vague memories of elementary school. One tiny green shoot is just barely peeking its head out, pressed up against the glass. Looking at it niggles something in the back of Pete’s head.

“Mrs. Hammond says we get extra credit if it’s still alive when we come back!” his kid declares. He, like Pete, is nothing if not ambitious. He, unlike Pete, is not freaking out about the three week lockdown they’re about to enter.

“Sweet,” says Pete and promptly puts the jar up on the windowsill right by the sink. He figures someone will remember to water it if it’s right there. Probably.

There’s a moment before Pete turns away to make his kids a snack that a little tremor runs through his memories. He thinks maybe he’s forgetting something—or remembering it—but he can’t quiet put his finger on what. He dismisses the feeling with a vague memo to call one of the guys. Their long shared history leaves them each with three extra heads to remember things with, even if they all tend to remember things differently. If he’s forgotten something vitally important, he’s sure one of the guys will remember.

To the surprise of absolutely no parent ever, his son promptly forgets about the lima bean about two hours into his return home. Pete is the one that adds more water whenever he notices the paper towel growing a little dry and the one that notices when the seed grows tiny crooked roots and the first hint of a leaf.

For the first week of the lockdown, they take the mason jar down to complete his kid’s packet of science homework. They draw diagrams. They measure growth. They talk about photosynthesis and plant cells and a whole bunch of other things that makes Pete glad he’s no longer in the third grade.

The novelty of homeschooling quickly wears off as the “break” from school stretches past the three week mark. There is noise about online classes instead of mere packets. His kids’ mom mentions that some of the other parents heard that the whole year might just be shot when she comes around to scoop them up for her days of the week.

Pete teeters in a state of restless denial. He makes calls to Andy and Patrick and Joe about staging and effects and setlists. He waits on calls from anyone who might tell him anything concrete about their upcoming tour dates. He watches the news religiously. He starts contemplating cutting off his hand to save himself from his phone.

On week five of lockdown his kids are dropped off in their tiny kid-sized masks with shiny new chrome books for online school. The very first assignment has his son reaching into the mason jar and “dissecting” the poor little bean with a kitchen knife.

His son is thrilled. He seems to have forgotten all about the extra credit.

Pete, meanwhile, looks at his empty windowsill while doing the dishes that night and thinks, huh. Has his backyard always been that big?

The day they officially announce the tour delay, Pete calls Patrick while laying outside by the pool. It’s hard to be morose while lying in eighty-degree weather and wearing nothing but sweat pants and a t-shirt, but he manages.

“What are you doing for quarantine?” he asks the moment the line pick up.

There’s a loud yawn on the other end. It’s three in the afternoon. Somethings never change.

“Doing?” grumbles Patrick and there’s a shuffle like maybe he’s getting out of bed. Pete can already picture the face he’s making, the squinty one where he’s looking for his glasses, reprimanding the whole world for its brightness. “Like, as in plans? I dunno. It’s not a holiday.”

“I fucking wish it were a holiday,” groans Pete. He fucking loves holidays. He flaps a hand. “No, what are you _doing_. Like, right now. Today.”

“Oh, uh.” There’s more shuffling noises, then a rattling sound that is clearly a refrigerator door opening. “I dunno. Working probably.”

Pete has seen Patrick in every stage of wakefulness. He knows the steps of Patrick waking up better than he knows how rainbows really work or why gravity is always pulling them down. If his kid’s homework were in the subject of Patrick’s sleep cycle, Pete would be valedictorian of the third grade. In his mental map, he sees Patrick reaching blindly for the carton of Donald Duck Full-Pulp orange juice and makes a face.

“Dude, get a cup.”

“Screw you. It’s my juice.”

“That’s disgusting.”

Patrick’s eye roll is almost audible. “Kettle. Pot.”

There’s more back and forth after that, some good natured ribbing that slowly draws Patrick into speaking in complete sentences. Once Patrick has settled himself at his kitchen counter with toast toasting and coffee brewing and his phone tucked up to his ear, they eventually circle back around to Pete’s original question.

“I was working on a film score,” answers Patrick properly. “It’s mostly finished though. I’m going to send it off tonight. Why? You’ve got something?”

If Pete had something it would already be sitting in Patrick’s text messages. He sighs, rolling over in his pool chair and wincing as his spine twinges. “Fuck getting old, seriously.”

“Okay?” says Patrick.

“Nevermind. Forget the work stuff, dude. I mean what are you _doing_?” Pete sighs, letting some of his agitation leak into the phone. “How are you not going insane right now? Even you can’t spend every hour in the studio.”

“Oh.” Patrick sounds flummoxed for a second, like Pete has just asked him to stop thinking about breathing and now he’s forgotten how. Pete knows very well Patrick _can_ in fact spend every waking hour in the studio. “Uh, I bought a violin?”

Pete groans. “Dude.”

“It’s not, you know, anything serious,” Patrick defends. “I just thought—you know, why not? It’s such a finicky instrument. I never would have had the proper time to sit down for it before.”

Pete stops groaning. There’s something about what Patrick just said that has triggered his memory worm again. He sits up, pool chair shifting beneath him.

“I think I need a hobby,” Pete announces.

“You’ve got, like, five million hobbies,” huffs Patrick. “I know this because half the time they end up invading my life. Remember that time you got really into roller skating?”

“I need a home hobby,” Pete clarifies. He can see it now. He’s looking at the spot where the grass meets the wall that surrounds his backyard. Everything in this backyard is green and bright. Proof that things can grow here.

“What’s wrong with tennis?” Patrick sounds suspicious and awake and not at all supportive. Pete would like sleepy and complicit Patrick back now, thank you.

“Actually I was thinking about gardening.”

“Gardening?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Oh.” Patrick breathes out like he’s surprised. When he continues, his whole tone has changed. “Yeah, okay. That makes sense.”

“It does?”

“Doesn’t it? I could have sworn you’d mentioned once wanting to have a garden at home.”

The niggling in Pete’s mind finally gets a scratch. He grins to himself, pleased that once again his foolproof system has come through for him again. It’s so nice not to have to depend on his own brain to hold everything for him.

“Fuck yeah I did,” he grins.

“Well,” says Patrick, going back to sleepy now that Pete’s crisis is apparently over, “Just don’t grow weed. I doubt your neighbors would love you for it.”

“I’m not going to grow _weed_ ,” Pete says, affronted. He doesn’t even like weed that much. It makes him paranoid.

Still, thinking about weed is not a bad place to start.

Going to Home Depot is the first real outing Pete does since the lockdown began. He’s been to his office twice—once to retrieve some stupid notes he’d left scribbled on actual paper on his desk and once because he was crawling out of his head and needed a change in scenery, even if that scenery was relocating for a few hours to an office he rarely even used when the world was not on apocalypse mode. Even his groceries have been delivered. Stepping out of his SUV now and into an actual real-life store feels awfully similar to stepping on some kind of unbreakable vow.

He makes it up to himself by promising not to get anywhere near the store employees until he absolutely has to. Fuck six, he’s keeping _twelve_ feet of distance between him and and next poor bastard. Unfortunately, this leaves him facing what he deems The Wall of Dirt alone.

Naturally, he calls a friend.

“So why are you calling me?”

Joe sounds honestly bewildered over the phone. That might also be the effect of having a new baby at home. Pete wishes he had as easy an excuse for as drained out as he feels. He shifts uneasily in the aisle, staring at the wall of potting soil with his mask high and his hat low. He has no idea what he’s doing here.

“You know,” says Pete. “You’re like a plant guy.”

“I’m a weed guy. Occasionally a mushroom guy.”

“Yeah.”

“No.” A baby begins to cry faintly in the background, followed by a low moan from Joe. When he comes back to the call several long seconds later, the sounds of a hiccuping baby follow. “Call me when I’ve managed not to kill the actual real-life children I’m trying to grow.”

“But—“

“Try Andy,” cuts in Joe, just as a baby begins to cry again.

Pete wants to be angry when he hears the click of his phone, but honestly, Joe is right.

When in doubt, the answer is almost always Andy.

Andy does not know a thing about growing plants, but he is a virtual phone tree to plenty of hippie-types that do. Somehow, this results in Pete pushing a cart of organic everything back to his car and staring in dismay as he tries to figure out how to work his wares in amongst all his kids’ soccer gear and his own tennis bag that are still hogging up the cargo section.

When he gets home, half of the little starter plants have tipped and spilled dirt everywhere. Fantastic. Still, he carries everything into the backyard and sets it all down in a neat little line before fishing out the vacuum and cleaning up the mess.

When he walks back into the backyard, he eyes his assembled goods and pretends to know what he’s doing. Pete’s done a lot in life under the motto of fake it til you make it (see, him playing bass for a living). He’s not about to admit defeat in front of the delicate leaves of his new housemates.

Andy’s hippie friends had advised him against digging up his nice, manicured lawn. Well, actually, they’d criticizes him for a having a nice manicured lawn in California before Andy had cut in and commanded him to leave the grass alone. Andy was afraid of Pete making messes. Andy knew Pete too well. The final result is that Pete now owns several overpriced pots he fills up with organic potting soil.

“Okay, little dudes,” Pete says, picking up the handful of tiny starter plants the hippies had made him buy. Pete thinks they’re kind of cheating, but he’s not about to go against good advice. He plucks out the first of what promise to be jalapeños and digs around in the dirt. “Mi casa es su casa.”

The potting soil is weirdly fluffy as he makes a little burrow for each one—jalapeños, tomatoes, even a little squash thing. He wants things he can use. Plants he can bring inside and know he made happen.

By the end of his little outdoors project, he’s got dirt wedged up his nails and three semi-respectable looking pots with a few tiny shoots of green from each one. He lines them up not far from the pool, where they won’t get knocked over accidentally but they won’t be ignored either.

It’s stupid, maybe, but he snaps a picture too. He hesitates opening his intragram, feeling oddly bashful, before sending it out to the guys instead.

Andy gives him a thumbs up. Joe leaves him on read. Patrick takes half the day but finally replies: _Glad you’re keeping busy._ _Try not to kill them._

Pete grins. He’d take those three idiots’ reactions over a thousand likes on instagram in a heartbeat.

Pete spends maybe too long each day squatting by his potted plants waiting to see them grow. He admits he can be a bit obsessive sometimes. And impatient.

He cracks about two weeks in when the leaves of his tomato plant start to curl. He doesn’t know what to do so he brings the plant in, propping it up on his kitchen counter and making an emergency call to Andy.

“I need a new hobby.”

“You just got a new hobby.”

“I’m killing my new hobby.”

Andy sighs, long-suffering and familiar. “Let me see it.”

The picture Pete sends gets shopped around the hippie phone tree who report back that Pete is apparently _smothering the poor thing_ and that he _needs to let it breathe_.

“Just water it less,” Andy translates.

“Water it _less_?” Pete demands.

“Less,” Andy confirms, before ending the call with this snippet of wisdom. “Take a walk or something, Pete. At the very least get out of your house for a minute.”

So Pete gets out of his house for a minute.

Well, he cajoles his kids into getting on their scooters and takes the whole household for a walk for more like an hour. Their neighborhood is well-paved and well-manicured, but the Wentz family has scarcely explored it. Pete doesn’t always love walking around outside even with a supposed security gate around the whole thing. His kids, on the other hand, love it.

They find a park that literally none of them have gone to before and even though the playground equipment is roped off with caution tape his sons go whizzing around on the pavement. Pete takes his daughter and helps her inspect the pinecones without using her mouth.

It’s on their walk back that Pete sees it. One of his neighbors has a front yard made entirely of succulents. It’s just like a little succulent carpet that Pete finds instantly fascinating. Pete doesn’t know why or how but there’s a box sitting on the curb with _FREE_ his kids are already investigating.

“One each,” Pete says before he even sees what his sons are pulling out. “You can have _one_ each.”

It turns out that what is in the box is none other than tiny succulent clippings. Pete doesn’t really get it, but he doubts his neighbor would be so much of a dick to put out dead things for people to pick up. Probably. Unless they are supposed to be like flowers?

Pete doesn’t know. He picks up one for himself though— a pinkish green thing with spiky leaves. Much like the last time, his kids forget about their new findings almost the minute they get home and within range of their video games, but Pete doesn’t. He sets his daughter up on a stool and drags out what’s left of his potting soil and sacrifices four mugs he doesn’t care that much about to plant the little dudes in.

His ex is amused when she opens the door the next day and is greeted with each of their kids holding mugs with tiny succulents inside, but she grins when Pete passes her the extra one.

“You seem grounded,” she says with a smile that says she’s both amused and surprised.

“I’m just, you know, keeping busy.”

He keeps the smile the encounter brings him a secret behind the closed door.

He doesn’t tell his kids anything when he goes back at night and scoops up the rest of the _FREE_ box. He’s not so old he can’t still be a neighborhood menace.

“Uh, Pete,” says Patrick, sounding vaguely bemused.

“Sup?”

“I got my mail today.”

“That’s cool. Any neat coupons? I’m collecting the Bed, Bath, and Beyond ones.”

“Am I supposed to read into the fact that you sent me a cactus?”

Pete perks up. He’s in the kitchen, making his best attempt at kneading bread. He’s not sure he’s doing it correctly though. His hands are currently covered in half an inch of dough which doesn’t look anything like the video.

“You got it!” he cheers, dubious bread momentarily put on pause. “Hold on. Hold on. Quick. FaceTime me. My hands are dirty.”

There’s a crackled sigh on the other line. Then the call hangs up and Patrick’s face fills his screen. Almost immediately, his eyebrows jump.

“What the fuck. Pete. Are you _cooking_?”

“Baking,” Pete corrects, then frowns down at his sticky hands. “Sort of. I’m making bread. I’m pretty sure that’s considered baking.”

“Are you wearing an apron?” Patrick demands, still squinting hard through the screen. Pete glances down.

“Oh yeah. I just kept getting stuff on my clothes. It’s pretty rad, right?”

Patrick makes a strangled sound.

“You alright, man?” Pete asks.

“I’m sorry, I’m just—“ Patrick sucks in a deep breath. His face is sort of pink, like he really was choking. Pete stops kneading enough to look at him in concern.

“Dude, get some water. You look like you’re about to faint.”

“And you look like you’re about to join Martha Stewart,” Patrick mutters.

Pete looks down at himself and frowns. His kids had laughed at him too and demanded donuts when he’d tried to make them fancy French toast last weekend. It had only been a little bit burnt.

“Is it too much?”

There’s a pause on the other end. Pete looks back up to see Patrick wiping his face clean of his sour expression for something more contrite. “No. Sorry. I’m just…surprised to see you looking so domestic.”

“I mean, it’s just bread.”

“I’m not ragging on you,” Patrick says, shaking his head. “It’s good. I’m just, you know, surprised.”

Pete shrugs, a little embarrassed. “Guess I needed a hobby. Anyway, how’d he do on the trip? I can send over soil too if it tipped out. I tried to pack it in a way not to kill him.”

“Him?”

“The little dude you’re holding,” Pete explains. It takes Patrick a long second to look down at the tiny plant in his hand. “Also,” adds Pete, “he’s a succulent, not a cactus. You’re not really a desert person, huh?”

“I’m a pale person, Pete.”

“Yeah, I know. Honestly, you bitch about sand more than a Skywalker.”

“I do when people are shoving it down my shorts!”

Pete huffs and grins, then frowns when he looks down at his sticky hands again. He sighs and shapes the dough into a vague ball before tossing it into a bowl to proof. He’s either done it right or not at this point. His hopes aren’t that high.

It’s when he’s washing his hands in the sink and listening to Patrick catch him up on his friends and family that Pete has the epiphany that his bandmates are not the only people in his little web of connections. Or the only people who remember the things that Pete wants to know. He cuts Patrick off as he’s talking about some cousin or another’s terrible wedding to ask the really pressing question:

“Hey, do you think your mom still has that one sticky bun recipe?”

Three minutes later, Patrick ends the video calling looking just as confused as he started it.

Mrs. Stump does still have that one sticky bun recipe. In fact, she has a whole book of baking recipes that she offers to fax over to Pete, which fails entirely because Pete isn’t _that_ old that he owns a fax machine at home. Instead, he’d had a lovely time transcribing her favorite beginner’s recipes by hand after failing to walk her through sending a picture with her phone.

“I can’t believe you spent two hours on the phone to my mom yesterday,” Patrick complains moments after Pete sends him a picture of his slightly-soggy-but-still-good blueberry muffins.

“Yeah, you totally can,” Pete rebukes, absently dribbling water into the line of herbs on his window sill. “Your mom loves me.”

“I know. What’s weird is that _you_ wanted to talk for two hours.”

“Hey, your mom is great. She’s gonna mail me some starter for sourdough. Oh, also she wants you to call on Sunday. Apparently someone’s been a naughty son and hasn’t checked in.”

“I despise you.”

“What can I say, Trick? Your mom is a total mi—“

“Finish that sentence and I’ll make sure you’ll regret it.”

Pete sniggers and shuts up. He turns off the trickle from the tap, then eyes his jalapeño plant outside the window. It’s maybe his favorite plant, if only because he knows his kids won’t touch it with a ten-foot pole. The squash pot had already taken an unfortunate dive into the pool.

He steps outside the sliding glass door and grabs the hose. On the other end of the line, he hears the sound of a car door slamming.

“You going out?” Pete inquires.

“Yeah. Groceries run.”

“Whatcha getting?”

“Literally anything that is not pizza. I’m starting to know the delivery people by name.”

Pete hums and gives his jalapeño plant an extra squirt, before turning his attention to the newly planted flowers by his backyard wall. He wants to have honeysuckle up the base of it by next spring. Maybe put in a lemon tree in the corner if he feels confident enough.

When he’s done with that, he turns a circle, realizing that for all the pictures he’s sent none of his friends have actually seen his plants in action. He asks the question before he can really think about it.

“Want to come over instead?”

Patrick’s sigh is instant and regretful. “Pete…”

“Come on. I know you’ve been holed up in your studio this whole time. The only people I see are my kids. We’ve totally got this bubble thing on lock.”

“What about your tennis buddies? And you’ve been golfing.”

“All masked and distanced,” Pete promises, growing excited now. “Come on,” he wheedles. “We’ve been totally safe. It’s been like five months since we’ve hung out. Don’t tell me your not at least a _little_ bored of sitting around at home.”

Patrick sighs again, but it’s not like Pete hasn’t spent more than half of his life persuading Patrick to go against his logical instincts. He knows a token resistance when he hears it.

“I got your mom to send me her lasagna recipe,” Pete says, sweetening the pot with a sugary little white lie. “Pick up noodles from the store and I’ll totally make it.”

Patrick folds like a wet house of cards. Pete hangs his hose up quick once the call ends, nearly skipping into the house to wash the dirt from his nails and call Patrick’s mom.

He’s sure lasagna can’t be that hard to make.

Pete has three young kids he sees almost every weekend. It’s not like he’s forgotten what hugging feels like. But it’s different, hugging a little body that squirms and tries to wipe boogers on him and sinking into the cloud-like embrace of his best friend.

“Ah fuck,” Pete mutters and buries his face into the familiar crook of Patrick’s neck. Patrick smells like off-tour Patrick. Clean and not-sweaty and slightly minty from that cheap body wash he’s been using since forever. Pete is embarrassed to feel his throat tighten up at the smell.

For once, Patrick bares it for all of five seconds before wriggling.

“Uh Pete. Groceries. Also I need to wash my hands. Seriously, dude.”

Pete reluctantly peels himself off of Patrick’s stupidly comforting neck and lets him walk in the door. He looks good. Really good. Bright eyed and smiling like he only gets when he’s not feeling stressed at all. Pete hates him a little bit for that, or would have maybe, at the beginning of quarantine when his thoughts were trying to strangle him. Now though, he just takes a bag of groceries and tugs Patrick in and watches eagerly as Patrick blinks all of the changes in his kitchen.

“Is that a bread box…with flames on it?” Patrick asks, staring dumbfounded at the bright purple ceramic blazing with slightly-wobbly orange flames on his counter.

“Art project,” Pete explains. “Apparently those flames are retro now. Come on, come on. I want to show you outside.”

Patrick’s a spoilsport and makes them put away the groceries first—both Patrick’s personal ones and the rather extensive lasagna materials Pete had guiltily called back and asked him for—before following Pete into the backyard.

Since hanging up, Pete has already scoped out which of his veggies are good to pick and proudly treats Patrick to a round of ripe cherry tomatoes and a hunky squash from Squash Pot #2. He grins when Patrick bends down and sniffs the flowers.

“It’s— wow. It’s really not what I was expecting,” Patrick admits, smiling up at him. “I knew you were busy, but yeah. Just wow. This place looks great.”

The thing is, Pete’s actually pretty used to compliments from Patrick. He’s reticent about receiving them himself, but Patrick has no problem giving them. Still, this one strikes at a different spot than normal. Pete’s never been a domestic sort of person. He’s been proud of buying his first house and filling it with paintings and cool collectables and stuff, but he’s never thought of himself as much of a homemaker. It’s hard to, when the band is so rarely ever at home.

But now his house really does feel like _his_. He’s got at least twenty little succulents sitting in mugs and little planters throughout the whole house. He’s picked out the colors he wants to paint the living room and kids’ bedrooms and is planning on making it a project with his kids next weekend. He’s scoped out pillows for the sofa and is contemplating asking his mom for knitting lessons to make one of those giant, chunky throws he always sees on Instagram.

Yesterday, he made himself an actual cup of tea from an actual kettle on his stove and sat down on his couch and almost fell asleep in three minutes which has _never_ happened to him before. He’s posted more about his jalapeños on his socials than anything else in weeks.

Patrick’s compliment makes Pete duck his head and blush not because he is embarrassed, but because he’s so stupidly proud. He’s never imagined that _he_ could be the kind of person to make a space where so many little lives could live.

From the way Patrick is staring at him, mouth slightly tilted in a tiny little grin, he gets it.

“You did good, Pete,” Patrick says, clapping him on the shoulder. “You look really happy.”

He is really happy, Pete realizes as Patrick takes the lead and pulls them back inside. His bones feel settled. His mind is free from buzzing.

He steps in from the garden to a house that smells like fresh bread, his nails dark with dirt and twisted around Patrick’s. In that moment he smiles at Patrick and knows, he has everything he needs to make his house a home.


End file.
